ATLAS RISES
by Wafleman
Summary: [PLACEHOLDER] A No Man's Sky fan fiction. Heavily inspired by "Euclid Skies" by HonestScribe as well as "Blue Sky" by wafflestories. I could not have written anything without the inspiration you two have given. Thank you.
1. The Jump

She walked through the hallway connecting the front door to the rest of her rooms, humming whatever song was stuck in her mind. There was a quiet and soft beeping of an incoming transmission.

Maya Rea made her way over to the ViewScreen mounted next to the door while humming AJR's "Good Part". The song was hundreds of years old and the artists were long dead but the music was still good. Better than what Maya had then. At that time, people were too focused on making a living in their dying galaxy that the production of _good_ music, was rare. People who cared about music listened to the oldies.

"Hey, what's up sis," Maya said as she waved her hand in front of the ViewScreen which connected the transmission.

Her sister's voice filled her room as she made her way back to the main area which was a kitchen, a living room, and a small office all squashed into one small room with a bedroom and bathroom tucked away through a wooden door. It wasn't much but it was good enough for her. It got her by until she could get something better.

"Nothing much, just checking in," her sister said. Her voice was slightly tainted with static because of the distance between them. "When are you going to come home?"

Maya sighed. Every time her sister called, she had to give the same answer to the same question, "Not anytime soon. I'm sorry."

She groaned, "Why? It can't be _that_ hard to fly back to Earth. You have a ship anyway. What's stopping you?"

"You know why," Maya said as she sat down on her bed and started to pull her bright maroon-colored spacesuit boots over black socks. "It's a tough galaxy out there. I need to have enough money to take care of you when mom and dad leave."

"They're not going to leave soon," she said, her excitement slowly dying away. Talk of their parents always brought both of the sisters' spirits down. They had both gotten sick and any doctors the went to didn't know why. Her spirit more than Maya's. She had found a way to keep most of her innermost emotions at bay. "Dad is stable. He's getting better. And mom's back at home."

Maya nodded as she pulled the suit's bottom over the skintight black pants and tank top she was already wearing, "I know. I got the results this morning."

"They're doing fine. And dad's been able to work from the hospital."

"Soon he won't be able to."

"Well, aren't you going to at least visit before anything happens?" She asked.

Maya shook her head. She only had the helmet of the suit with its bright blue visor left to secure, "I can't. Work is tough and busy. I'm sorry."

"I know," she said, then sighed. "I have to get back to school, Maya. Talk to you tonight."

"You know how much I want to be there with you," Maya managed to slip in before she hung up. "Please tell me that you know."

There was silence for seconds before her sister replied, "I know. Sometimes I think you're just too overwhelmed with work that you're loosing the part of you that I loved the most."

Maya's heart almost skipped a beat, "Don't say that. That isn't true."

She sighed again. The sound made her heart ache, "Bye."

"Bye Sare."

With a soft _ding_, the transmission fell silent and Maya was left alone again. Whatever song that had been stuck in her mind was long gone. Replaced by quiet and a little bit of loneliness. Maybe she was right. She was losing something. Working for InExCor / Euclid took everything from her. She barely knew anyone, the only people she did know were her bosses. She had no friends. And what did it get her? The units she needed to pay for my next meal? Was it worth it?

7:43, she needed to be at her starship in seven minutes. Maya picked her helmet off of her unmade bed and walked down the hallway. She pulled the door open and closed it behind herself and stepped out into the cold, hard, undecorated corridor of the space station she lived in.

Maya followed it down to the end, past several other doors of her fellow coworker's rooms as she secured the helmet over her head. The jobs of those working at InExCor / Euclid were so spread out across the galaxy that contact with another coworker was _very_ rare. Maya had tried to make friends but to no avail. The only friend she had growing up was her little sister. That was probably why she felt so bad about leaving her.

The end of the corridor connected with a set of metal stairs that led down into the hangar bay below. As she stepped down, Maya adjusted the systems of her suit using a control panel on her left wrist. She didn't even need to look where she was stepping. Years of the same thing did that to a person's mind. Each step was one and a half feet long and 8 inches tall. Exactly each step was precisely the same measurements. Space stations were like that anywhere in Euclid you went. Perfectly precise.

Maya would rather not know the information. Her mind couldn't help but try to figure it out. A type of OCD she had been diagnosed with while growing up. The same type wasn't around before humanity reached to the stars. Something about the way a baby develops off-planet or in artificial gravity causes strange things to happen. Maya was a part of lucky few that survived. Her along with her sister, Sarah. And her parents and their parents. Maya was part of a lucky family but alongside everyone else, she didn't feel all that lucky.

* * *

Maya made her way into the hangar bay which was surprisingly devoid of any kind smell. You would think that from whirring PulseEngines, and leaking LaunchThruster coolant that the place would smell of smoke and grease. It was perfectly sanitized by small little pieces of metal that were able to think as a collective. She knew they couldn't but, sometimes she couldn't help but find herself hoping that they didn't become sapient and take over everyone that lived on the station.

She walked passed lines of starships, all different shapes, sizes, and colors—but there were only four base types of ships: Explorers, Fighters, Haulers, and Shuttles. Maya's ship was a Fighter even though it couldn't take a Vy'keen's punch. She was surprised it was able to handle the pressure of its HyperDrive. Her own brain couldn't even handle the pressure.

Finally, she arrived at her ship. NE6 Tagaya. A Vy'keen ship. Maya had found it completely abandoned on Etchilo Prime. That was in another galaxy. She still couldn't believe it. She had spent most of her life tucked away in a corner of the galaxy called Amayaris, which her parents named her after. That region was home to humanity's first Solar System. Earth was a very different place than it was four centuries ago. Then she got a job at InExCor and the universe as she knew it expanded. Maya had traveled to another galaxy!

The only risk of intergalactic travel was the diseases the body's immune system wasn't resistant too. Foreign bacteria that were able to infect others while being killed off by those who's immune systems could defend themselves. Maya was one of those that were sent back to Euclid because of the bacteria her body couldn't fight. She was assigned back to InExCor / Euclid.

She stepped up to her white-painted ship with a bit of blue and red trimming and knocked on its metal hull. It obeyed her command and the black glass canopy popped out of its latches and slowly lifted revealing the black leather cockpit inside.

Maya climbed up and into the cockpit using handholds and footsteps she had carved into the hull herself. The ship was designed to be operated by a Vy'keen much larger than she was. Being human already made her smaller than any of them. Being the shortest girl in her class growing up didn't give her much more of an advantage.

She plopped into the pilot's seat as normally as she would any day and the canopy slowly sealed her away from the space station. She had tried her best to make the cockpit as homy as she could. She had spent more time there than she did in her own home. There were PhotoPanels along the top of the canopy that displayed old family photos, little cubby holes housed exotic flowers that she had managed to find during her adventures to the planets of Euclid.

The purple and blue shades of the flowers that filled her ship with a sweet aroma were the only flowers she had found. Every other planet she had explored alone was either cooking alive under their star's harsh rays or frozen solid from the star's neglect.

It was hard to see at first and people's ignorance stopped them from realizing, but her galaxy was dying. Not only Euclid, but every other discovered galaxy—Euclid, Eissentam, Mobile, all of them. She tried not to let it get into her mind though. She just kept living the same way she normally would. The same way everyone would. Long workdays for a few more units in the bank.

Her starship's databank pinged the heads-up-display on Maya's helmet visor. The message detailed her assigned system of documentation for the month. Everything she needed to know coming to her from a long-range scan.

/ / / / Vuyatiwai

Celestial Bodies 3 Planets 2 Moons

Dominant Lifeform Vy'keen

Economy Research / / Struggling

Conflict Level Critical

It became second nature for her to go through the system checks before launch. She knew it wasn't needed but she did anyway. The last thing she wanted to happen was to be stranded in space with a no functioning ship and a LifeSupport slowly draining power. The suit she wore, protected her from the harshest environments but did very little when it came to the vacuum that surrounded every world in the universe.

Environmental Shielding / / ONLINE

Atmospheric Control / / OPERATIONAL

Cabin Temperature Regulator / / ONLINE

LifeSupport Systems / / ONLINE

Four systems down. The four that made sure she didn't die by any means. Five left. The systems required for spaceflight. Even she didn't know entirely how they worked. Humanity had found a way to travel incredibly long distances in a relatively short amount of time but the Korvax had completely redesigned their technology. Maya knew how the originals worked, but not the new. She seemed to her parents as "a girl _after_ her time". She knew a lot about the past and not very much about the present.

These systems were meant to be tested outside of the station. It was incredibly dangerous to test them while still being docked inside the hangar, and Maya didn't think accidentally shooting someone else's ship with a PhotonCannon would go down very well. Or tearing the entire station in half with a HyperDrive jump. Maya was sitting in a very deadly weapon. She was surprised that no one had used it as one yet.

The ship vibrated and hummed as she activated the LaunchThrusters. The ship slowly lifted off of the sleek metal ground.

LaunchThrusters / / FUELED AND ONLINE

"Good to know," Maya sarcastically said as the space station's navigational controls took control of her starship.

The main thruster activated and her ship was propelled forward into a large tunnel lined with bright white lights. At the end of the tunnel were the stars. Once the ship left the tunnel, the controls were handed back to her. She quickly tested all the other systems she needed to. She tested the PulseEngine, the Photon and Pulse Cannons, and finally the HyperDrive.

This was the last one on the list, and the most important. Maya plotted the route her ship would take to get to the system she was assigned too. The ship estimated an arrival time of 23 minutes. It was going to be a long ride. A HyperDrive jump wasn't the most comfortable mode of transportation but it was certainly better than the alternatives. Spending thousands of years traveling to a system that would provide me with only a month's worth of work didn't seem very fun to her.

Maya's ship auto-adjusted directly towards the system it was traveling to. It became a habit for her to try to guess which one of the countless stars was the system she was jumping too. She was always wrong. But it was good enough to pass the few seconds it took to spool up the HyperDrive.

Maya had five-seconds to prepare. The center console just below the canopy counted down. In five-seconds she would be propelled to the speeds of light and even faster in just seconds.

Streaks of yellow light started to envelop her ship as the countdown reached 3. Then the space in front of her started to crack like breaking glass. The very fabrics of the universe being frozen in place and then broken into.

As the countdown ticked to 2 and then to 1, the glass broke and shattered revealing a blinding yellow and green tunnel of light beyond it. Then Maya's ship was propelled into it and then her entire mind was immediately slammed into unconsciousness.


	2. The Smudge Of Good

Maya slowly regained consciousness. There were seconds of haziness before her mind was fully back into the universe. She had gotten used to being knocked unconscious every HyperDrive jump.

Every time that Maya had jumped, she tried to guess how long she had been out for. This time she guessed that she had beaten her record by two or three seconds. Humans were the weakest of the sapient races they knew of, the strongest being the Korvax because of their metal bodies. Humans and Gek were the only ones affected by the amount of g-force put on their heads during a jump. Geks lost consciousness only for a few seconds. It had taken Maya 51 seconds to come around.

The rest of the journey was filled with the constant struggle to keep her breakfast where it was supposed to be. Throwing up inside an Exosuit was just as fun as the trip (more so when it happened _during_ the jump) but a lot easier to clean up. The suit was designed with everything in mind. Even a human with a weak stomach. Thankfully, that human wasn't Maya.

22 minutes later, the ship pulled out of the jump and the light disappeared revealing the system Maya found herself landing in. Even though it felt like she had come to a complete stop, she knew she was still traveling hundreds of miles a second. If nanotech allowed her to survive a HyperDrive jump, it was more than able to make a Pulse jump be _more_ than bearable.

A message appeared on Maya's HUD, warmly welcoming her to the solar system:

WELCOME TO / / VUYATIWAI / /

DISCOVERED BY / / [ AMAYARIS REA ] / / AT 8:13 | 05/24/2347

She took a few seconds to recover from the jump. When she did, she piloted the ship towards the closest planet. It was bigger than the others and was colored bright orange. It looked like it had teal colored water. It seemed like the most lively planet Maya had seen that year-round but she knew looks could be deceiving. The orange could be a strange type of radiated moss and the water could just be a type of element-based acid.

The ship flew towards the planet and cut into its atmosphere. She was surprised when she saw fluffy white clouds on the horizon and the dark starry sky slowly fade to a bright blue (if the atmosphere was toxic or irradiated, the sky would be gray and tinged with a slimy green color). As she got closer to the ground, Maya was able to make out orange grass and large, tall trees with large dark red colored fronds. The blue on the planet also turned out to be what she had written off as a possibility. Water.

Planets like these were gems. Rare and beautiful gems. Maya didn't know how she could be so lucky to be assigned to research this planet for a day. Workers for InExCor / Euclid weren't allowed to spend more than a week on a planet, they were required to return then. She would spend four weeks traveling back and forth each day while quickly documenting the local life and how they act. Then she would move onto the next system. If the system was interesting enough, a scientist at best would be sent out. Not a Korvax but certainly someone.

Maya landed her ship in a small grove of trees. There was a bay of water not too far away. The last time she saw this much water was back home. The Earth Maya grew up on did have a lot more water than the twenty-first century (starting from around 70% and ended with a total of 91% surface water), melting ice caps and global warming does that to a planet, but the amount of water on this planet was still rare.

Once the ship's landing gear touched down on the soft dirt, information filled the bottom right corner of Maya's HUD. It was the planet's environmental specifications.

/ / / / Paradise Planet

Weather Foggy

Sentinels Extreme

Flora Full

Fauna Scarce

Sentinels. The galaxy's police force. Every planet has them but some were more protective than others. Their job was to keep the environment as untouched as possible. The Paradise type planets always had the harshest Sentinels around them. You couldn't even touch a tree without getting a laser blasted through your Exosuit. Other planets, you could deforest an entire continent and they wouldn't mind.

Most were just small little robots that floated about seven feet from the ground. Two small PhotonCannons on each side. A punch from one of those suckers wasn't as strong as a bullet but defiantly could kill if there were enough of them.

Maya rubbed the side of her suit at the thought. She once had an unfortunate run-in with a pack of strict Sentinels. She had ignored her AI's warnings, thinking that she could handle a bunch of flying metal barrels if they became a problem. She started mining away some concentrated Di-Hydrogen crystals. She woke up with five bleeding wounds in her abdomen and two in her left shoulder. The reinforcements that they send in though, are a different story. Maya was sure that she would _not_ have survived if she had to have dealt with them.

No one knew where they came from. Some guessed from other unexplored galaxies but there was no way they would be able to be so prevalent in our galaxies if that was the case. There also weren't any facilities that could manufacture the bots.

The most widely accepted explanation is that the Atlas had sent them. The Korvax god (and a very real one). A strange entity that left interfaces scattered across the galaxy. The Atlas constantly called every sapient creature including Maya. It called them to its aid. It said if they helped it, it would help them in return. It said that they couldn't resist. It told her that she had no choice but to follow its ways. But she resisted. The Atlas still called to her except she had grown in strength. She knew that she had to continue to resist it.

Maya hopped out of her ship's cockpit and landed in the grass. She took a deep breath of air in but remembered that the helmet was still on top of her head. The air still smelled and felt as synthesized as it was in the space station that she lived on.

The suit's temperature read 73°F. A warm sunny day back on Earth and after a glance at the panel on her wrist, Maya knew the atmosphere was made from oxygen and nitrogen. Perfect conditions. Something hard to find. Science had found many reasons for what was happening to the galaxy but they just brought more questions that didn't have answers.

Maya groaned as she lifted her hands to the side of the helmet. Her head still ached from the jump and she dearly hoped some fresh air would help. She twisted the helmet and it clicked, then she pulled it up and off of her head. She held the helmet at her side as she pulled a deep breath of air into her lungs, and then slowly pushed it back out. The air was fresh and clean and smelled of Gamma Root—which was strange that a plant that needed so much radiation to survive was able to make its way on a planet without any.

The temperature outside the suit and inside was the same. When the outside temperature fell in between 70 to 85°F, the suit would match the temperature. There wasn't not much of a point of it but to be a cool feature. Maya however, liked it. It made her feel less disconnected from the world she was exploring.

Maya's AI's computerized female voice (with a hint of a British accent) filled her ears through a hidden earpiece. It was louder than it needed to be but it was better than nothing. She would have been dead a long time ago (thanks only to her inattentiveness) if that annoying AI wasn't there. There were so many more interesting things on these planets (even though most of them were dead) than worrying about keeping herself from suffocation or burning or freezing to death.

_"High Sentinel Planet. Continue with extreme caution."_

"Thank you for warning me," Maya replied even though the AI only accepted pre-programmed terms. It would tell you the current temperature of the PulseEngine's resonator if you asked for it but when you asked it how it was feeling, it had nothing to tell you about.

_What a fun life_, Maya thought. She couldn't decide who had it better. Her? Or the AI.

* * *

Maya started out of the grove, looking for whatever smelled like Gamma Root—the tangy, bitter smell was hard to mistake. She was curious to know what Gamma Weed was doing here. If she did find some, it could be enough to get a research team out there. She would be rewarded handsomely even though it was pure luck that she had been assigned to that planet. It just shows how flawed the system was. People who put actual work in got nothing while the ones who rode on the back of others or had a nice stroke of luck got rich.

She checked the panel on her wrist again. 1,432,640 units to her name. Just eight more months of work and she would be able to afford a week's long trip back to Earth. Just a week. It had been 4 years since Maya had last seen her parents and her sister without the need of a ViewScreen. She had worked so hard all of that time just for only _one_ week.

She remembered what she had learned about the twenty-second century Earth. At one point, people were working minimum wage at 50 to 60 units an hour and anyone could buy a very cheap starship for 200,000 units. Now, things cost more and it took people longer to earn money.

Maya sighed, at least she would get to see her family again. To be with them again. At least there was a smudge of good on the glass pane that was her life.

But what was it all for? Eventually, her parents would die. She would be left alone with her sister until _she_ died and then eventually Sarah would and their family would be lost. What was it all for? Was all the strength and effort and energy that Maya had put—and are putting into living—into _surviving_—all a waste? Was it a waste of time if it could be taken away in a second?

Maya winced, "Geez. What a thought."

The beautiful landscape and the setting orange sun completely contrasted what was happening inside of her. She felt a sinking depression that completely overwhelmed her. A feeling of loneliness, helplessness. She had always thought of herself as a happy person but isolation did that to a person. It made them think thoughts they never thought they would. And never thought they could.

Maya pushed them all away, she had too. That wasn't the way she needed to be thinking. She just needed to think about that smudge on the window, the good. She would be able to see them again. She would be happy again. For now, she just needed to work.

And work she did.

* * *

Maya came back to her ship nine hours later after scanning every living thing she could find on the face of that planet, even though working through the night wasn't ideal. The trees, the plants, some flowers. She added a yellow one to the collection in her ship's cockpit. She also found some insects. One looked like an alien dragonfly with much larger eyes than she felt comfortable with.

She uploaded the scans and received her payment for them. 330 units were credited to her account. She shrugged as she saw the not abnormally low number and made her way back to her ship. Maya was securing the helmet back onto the neck of her suit when she remembered the Gamma Weed. She still hadn't found it.

She continued up the makeshift ladder carved in the hull of her ship and plopped down into the pilot's seat. The canopy slowly closed as it detected pressure on the seat and sealed the cockpit away from the world outside.

"Computer, voice command," she said as she scanned the land outside the canopy. A quiet beep signified that the computer was awaiting its instructions. "Scan for gamma root."

The AI replied, _"Gamma Root and Gamma Weed not found on planets with a Paradise classification." _

"Scan for it anyway."

As Maya finished speaking a wave of blue light shot out from her ship and traveled across the planet's surface. The light wasn't actually there, it was just a holographic projection of what the ship was _actually_ doing.

A few seconds later, the AI returned, _"Gamma Weed detected. Pinging Exosuit heads-up-display."_

Before the AI finished speaking, a small lime green colored hexagon appeared on Maya's helmet's HUD. It fixed itself on a single spot as she moved her head around to show where the ship's scanners had picked up the weed. And it wasn't far either. To the right of the ping was the distance to the Gamma Weed. It was only 1,500 feet from Maya's position. It wouldn't take too long to walk there.

She hopped back out of the ship and began her walk. She didn't walk fast—she wasn't in a rush. She still had about an hour until she was expected to pick up her sister's call back at the space station. Maya just walked through the small groves of red trees and green bushes as the rising sun cast yellow rays of light across the blue colored bay. It was so peaceful. The water slowly washing up on a sandy shore. Maya hadn't touched a body of water in as long as she could remember. The _sight_ of water with any more volume than a bathtub almost made her want to take her suit off and jump in.

She eventually reached the plant. It was growing in a small valley surrounded by gentle hills about 10 feet tall at max. The plant itself had long green stems that reached towards the sky almost like arms. On the tops of each stem was a yellow flower. It wasn't like the flowers Maya had back in her ship though. These were small and had thin, pointed pedals. The plant seemed so out of place on the Paradise planet she had found it on. Maybe that should've told her to leave it alone.

That was a developed problem of Maya's. She was too curious. Her parents joked that it would mean her end at some point in her life. She had once looked down the barrel of a PhotonKnife as a kid because it made funny noises when her parents used it and she wanted to know how it worked. Could've taken her eye out or worse.

She reached out to the plant and grabbed one of the stems. The roots of these plants harvested Sievert Beans. Yellow balls that glowed red. They were a stimulant more powerful than illegal drugs (but yet somehow legal). One of those would keep you full of energy for more than a day. You had a huge crash when you came down but they proved useful during the long-winded jobs.

Maya pulled up on the stem and yanked the base out from underneath the soft ground. The roots were exposed just enough to show the pearl-like yellow orbs that had a ring of red light around them. She got down on one knee and started to pick the beans off of the root but as soon as the tip of her finger touched one, a searing pain burst across the back of her head, slamming her into unconsciousness.

* * *

A flash of red—blindingly red light. Where was it coming from? The world was dark. Maya stood in front of the Gamma Weed. The sun was rising in front of her but the light didn't penetrate its surface. It was only the red light that she could see. It was pulsating, moving. She recognized it but she didn't want to admit it. She didn't want to say its name.

"Atlas."

ATLAS. It reached out to her—it kept calling. Everything vanished. She was standing in the plains of darkness. The ground nothing more than the space station's black reflective ground. Darkness as far as she could see. Her mind was being bombarded with words, it was speaking to her. The Atlas kept calling. Kept pulling her towards it. She tried to bring her hands to her ears but her arms wouldn't listen. She tried to scream but nothing came out. All that there was to hear was Atlas's voice.

Then the darkness vanished. Replaced with light. Everything stopped. The Atlas stopped calling to her. The only thing that remained was Maya-

-and herself.

She was lying on what would be the ground if there was anything else but white. Blood painted her already red suit. Her helmet was cracked and lying just inches away from her hands. The fingertips of the suit's gloves had been ripped off and her fingers were scratched and bloody.

But the most terrifying thing—the thing that struck Maya right in the heart. That took her breath away and destroyed it, was her face. She was looking up at her with a blank look on her face. A massive gash had carved itself across her right cheek and through the side of her skull, blood and drool dripping from it. Her usually bright hazel eyes were dull and dark and they were looking straight towards Maya. She was dead.

* * *

Maya's mind returned to the world in a rush of adrenaline that knocked the wind out of her lungs. The sun's light was blinding. The ship realized this and dimmed the canopy's glass. She was sitting in the pilot's seat with her hands latching onto the armrests of her chair like vises. Her head ached and her ears were ringing. She didn't know what had happened but it felt like her head was bleeding.

Maya went to take off her helmet but something was in her right fist. She opened it to see the glowing Sievert Beans laying in her palm. Her eyebrows wrinkled with confusion.

"What?" She asked herself. Maya immediately had assumed that she had been dreaming. That the smell when she first took off her helmet combined with the exhaustion she assumed she must've been feeling, created a dream where she had found the beans. But they were real. It was real.

The Atlas always appeared to you in dreams or at the interfaces. Maya had them before. They weren't dreams. They were more like nightmares. Some people feared them, some people accepted them because they worshiped the Atlas. It was something every sapient creature had to deal with and some did better than others.

But this one was different.

This wasn't a dream. It wasn't a nightmare. It was a vision. It was real. Maya could feel it now as she held the Sievert Beans in her hand. The Atlas spoke to her and she had no choice but to reply. She couldn't remember what it said and she didn't know what she replied with. Whether she fought to resist it? Or she succumbed to the call of the Atlas.

Maya tried to convince herself that she couldn't worry about it now. She needed to deal with it when it became a problem. Then was not the time. The problem that was most important to her was—after a quick check at her wrist—Maya only had 14 minutes to get back to the station to be there when her sister called.

She activated the LaunchThrusters and flew back up into space. Her ears popped as she broke through the atmosphere. The nanotechnology worked well enough to stop Maya from getting crushed by her chair when she activated the Pulse or HyperDrive but not well enough to stop pressure to be released from her ears or at least making it a little more comfortable. The technology wasn't that advanced she guessed.

The HyperDrive jump took a little shorter than the jump before. Once the path had been created between to points in HyperSpace, it became easier for the starship to break into the fabrics of the universe and travel along it.

The acceleration still knocked her unconscious though. Every time it happened, she woke up wondering if her brain was going to get permanently damaged by it. Maybe after several more jumps, she wouldn't wake up from a jump. Her brain and skull being too weak to resist the pressure.

Maya came out of the jump just a few thousand miles from the front of the space station. She pushed on the controls and the ship zoomed towards the bright blue triangular-shaped opening. The contrast between its gray metal, nonreflective surface, and the purple space behind it was incredible. Proof humanity was still ruining whatever they touched in one way or another. She tried to imagine what the purple space and the nearby planet would look like without the station and the blue streaks of light marking other people's ships cluttering the view.

Once Maya's ship reached the blue light, the controls were pulled away from her and hid under the rest of the ship's dashboard. The station piloted her ship through the long runway and to her designated landed spot. The ship touched down and the platform it landed on rotated so that the ship was ready to launch again.

The canopy opened automatically, urging Maya to get out so the ship could get fueled. She tucked the beans she still had in her hand into a cabinet to the side of her seat and climbed out of the ship. Her boots slammed onto the sleek black ground. She could see my reflection in it. Like she was looking down into a puddle but it was flat, black, and solid. Rain was another thing Maya hadn't seen a lot of.

She made her way back to her rooms through the crowds of other workers that were returning from their assigned parts of the galaxy. She didn't say a word until she got back into her rooms. She had never talked to anyone even though the hanger bay was filled with conversation.

This day was the same as any other. Maya quickly made her way up the one and a half foot long and eight-inch tall steps and hid herself away, alone in her room.


	3. The Rescue

She swung her door open and slammed it behind herself. She was late. She was never late. Every day, every morning. She was always there to take her sister's call.

She took her gloves off her hands and tossed them to the ground and started to take the rest of her suit off as she started a transmission with her sister using the ViewScreen next to the door. She picked up within seconds with the same question as always.

"How much-," Maya cut her off before she could finish.

"330."

"What's up with you today?" Sarah asked as Maya plopped down on the bed and struggled on taking her boots off. "You're late."

"Sorry," Maya said trying to think of an excuse. "Long day."

"Another long day?" Sarah asked. "And you earned 20 units less than you did yesterday."

"I would love to see this document you're creating," Maya said as she finally got her suit off and sprawled out on her still unmade bed.

"453 days long," her sister said. "You work too hard."

"That's what we need to do Sarah, to survive in this universe. Don't rush it. Stay in school for as long as you can. At least you don't have to pay to live."

"I know. Why is it like this anyway?" She asked." Why do you have to work so much?"

Maya shook her head, "I haven't the faintest."

"Haven't the faintest? I remember _learning_ about when that phrase died."

"You know what mom and dad say," Maya said with a nod. Then the sisters both finished at the same time.

"You're a girl after her time."

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

There was silence. Sarah didn't respond, "Sarah. Are you still there?"

"Yeah," she slowly said. There was something on her mind. "Has it- has it spoke to you?"

"Has it spoke to you?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I don't know what to do."

"Resist it," Maya said as firmly as I could. "Push it as far away from you as you can. Don't let it near you."

"I'm trying, Maya, I'm trying."

* * *

The rest of their conversation seemed forced. The vision the Atlas had forced into Maya's mind always was at the forefront. She couldn't keep telling her sister to resist it if she didn't know if she was able to do the same herself.

After ten minutes of silence, they both decided it best to call it a night. Sarah had school the morning after and Maya, well, Maya was hungry. She hadn't eaten anything the entire day.

She quickly changed into something a little more presentable—a pair of black jeans and a navy green leather jacket—and made her way out of her room while laid her short black hair over her left shoulder. She made her way through the corridor and down the stairs toward the hangar. Except instead of walking through the circular metal doorway, she turned into another corridor to the left. It immediately opened up into a large balcony that looked over the hangar bay.

The smell of freshly cooked slabs of meat filled Maya's nose. The smell made her stomach growl even more than it had been before. She also could smell melted butter and spices. Everything about the balcony screamed food and Maya almost wished it didn't—the hunger pains getting worse by the second—she couldn't remember the last time she felt this hungry.

Maya weaved through tables and chairs all seemingly occupied by some type of alien. Gek, Korvax, Vy'keen. It didn't matter. The only thing she noticed was that none of them were human.

She stepped up to the counter and dinged a small metal bell that brought the attention of the waiter towards her. A tall, flat-faced Korvax slowly walked towards her. Its words being translated into English through Maya's earpiece.

"What do you want?" It asked.

Maya rubbed the side of her face, "Give me anything. I don't care."

"Very well," The Korvax said in a rather bored tone of voice. He typed something into a UnitRegistry and then looked back up at Maya. "That will be 340 units."

"340?" Maya asked, unable to hide the shock in her voice. That was almost how much money she had made that day. "That's twenty units higher than yesterday."

The Korvax didn't move a muscle, "340 units or you go hungry."

Maya gritted her teeth as she reached into her back pocket and drew out a small, flat plastic card. She held it out to the Korvax and it took it, quickly swiped it over top the UnitRegistry and then handed it back to her. She quickly pocketed the card and watched the screen on her wrist. She watched the units being retracted from her account.

She hated how much the system played her. She _needed_ to pay the money. If she didn't, she would starve. If she didn't work, she got no money, she got no food. Everything in the universe wanted her to do what it wanted her to do. She wasn't able to do anything her way. Even eating a meal that was twenty units cheaper than the one before.

She took her food—which ended up being a plate of dry, rubbery steak and what Maya guessed was mashed potatoes—and made her way to an empty table. She slowly put the food in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed while blankly staring at an ultra-wide ViewScreen. It displayed a sector-wide news channel.

"Rade Turpanq. Niqe oima eoul," a Vy'keen said. Maya's earpiece was unable to translate the language through the ViewScreen. "Guneunggek, ata hancamca rum fenyanansh lemu tuan."

Maya had just finished scrapping every scrap of food off her plate when a familiar language filled her ears. English. She looked back up to the ViewScreen to see a man sitting at a metal desk.

"An increased amount of pirate activity has been noted around the Vuyatiwai systems," the man started. "Several ships targeting small freighters and passing starships with valuable cargo. Sentinel forces suggest avoiding the regions or continuing with extreme risk."

The screen switched to Gek which began to ramble on in a language that Maya didn't understand—not that she needed to. Her mind was focused on what the man had said. Pirate activity around the Vuyatiwai systems. That was the exact region of space that she had been assigned to and she already knew that pirate activity wasn't enough for her superiors to pull her from the system.

Maya was completely expendable. She sat on a balcony full of workers. The rest of the station held hundreds more. There were thousands of space stations under InExCor / Euclid that held just as many workers within them. If Maya was killed, someone else would be assigned to her system and her hard-earned units would be transferred to them.

It was so unfair! Maya felt like she could shoot onto her feet and slam her fists down on the table at the thought. Life was _so unfair_!

Instead, Maya left the plate on the table and returned to her room, with a full belly, but, 340 units less than when she came down.

* * *

The next morning was the same as every other before it. Maya got up, showered, answered her sister's calls, then got ready for the day. She put her suit on and made her way down to the hangar bay. Seconds later, she was in her ship, floating in space.

The HyperDrive jump took 12 minutes this time around. Maya slowly regained consciousness after the jump and continued through the system. Her mind was focused on the news broadcast the night before. Pirate activity. She had made sure that she had nothing of value on the ship before she left the station.

She passed by the beautiful orange Paradise planet as she continued towards a gray rocky one instead. The orange planet didn't seem all that beautiful to her though once the vision she had there, flashed in her mind. The gash that had cut through the muscle in her cheek and the bone in her skull as easily as her mining laser cut through carbon. She saw her own eyes, lifeless and dead.

She pushed the memory away. As far back in her mind as she could. It would do her no good thinking about it. The Atlas had already tried things like that before. It tried to scare her into submission—this time was a little bit more intense than others but it still wasn't going to work. She wouldn't let it. Even if what she was shown might be what lied ahead in her reality.

The ship pulled out of the Pulse jump because of the planet's atmospheric interferences. Maya piloted the ship down through the atmosphere and came to land it on top of a rocky mountainside. The land beyond her glass canopy was dead and burned from the sun's rays. The only plant life seemed to be trees and cacti and there were no signs of any kind of fauna.

She quickly left the ship and preformed the same long, monotonous job as she had the day before and all the other endless weeks and months before that. She scanned every tree, every plant, every rock, every kind of natural material on the planet's surface. Then she came back to her ship at the end of the day with 470 units to her name.

She lifted her ship off the ground made her way back up into space. She prepared to make a HyperDrive jump back to her home space station when three red streaks of light chased behind a blue one. Pirates. A thought ran through Maya's mind telling her to run before she was pulled into the fight but she _needed_ to help whoever was in that ship or else she would be forsaking everything she had been taught as a kid.

Her AI warned her as the streaks of light got closer, one of the red ones breaking off from the rest and coming towards her. It decided for her. It was too late to turn away now.

_"Hostile ships approaching,"_ the AI said in its usual 'there's-no-need-to-worry-about-your-impending-doom-if-you-don't-do-anything-anytime-soon voice.

"I see it," Maya said as she grabbed the controls and pushed the ship forwards, toward the red streak of light.

_"Hostile scan detected."_

"Block it," Maya said as calmly as she could. She had managed to avoid or outrun the pirates she had come in contact with. She had never fought them before and she was a little worried about the structural integrity of her ship.

_"Scan blocked."_

The ship suddenly zoomed passed her. She swung her ship around to face it. She managed to track the ship as it weaved around her and a couple of asteroids and she pressed down a red button with her thumb that was on top of the right control.

Beams of blue light shot out of her ship and whizzed through space in between her and the pirate's ship. If there was sound in space, the beams of light would sound a little like some of the blaster type weapons from late-twentieth-century Earth's movies.

The blue beams of light struck the side of the pirate's ship and burst into bright orange explosions. The ship was still functional though and flew behind a large chunk of rock. Maya chased her ship after it. She weaved around the rock and saw the ship moved up and around. Within seconds, the pirate's ship was behind her and blasting its weapons at her.

Two beams of bright green light shot out of the middle of the ship's wings and slammed into the back of Maya's ship. The ship violently shook and red alarms rang in the cockpit. Something popped making Maya jump and smoke filled the air.

_"Shield down. Recharge immediately,"_ the AI warned Maya. Helpful information no doubt but defiantly not delivered the right way.

"Automatic recharge," Maya yelled as she tried to lose the pirate that was slowly gaining on her, weaving around asteroids and bits of rock. "Give me everything you got to keep this ship flying!"

The other streaks of light. The blue one and the two red had gotten closer to us. Close enough that Maya was able to hit one with her ship's PhotonCannons. She managed to hit its left-wing which caused it to spin out of control. It slammed into the side of an asteroid and burst into flames—its pilot undoubtedly dead.

Everything suddenly stopped for Maya at that one moment. The impact of that one destroyed starship made her heart stop beating and her head feel light. She had taken away a life. Someone was dead at her own hands. She had taken them away from whoever had held them close to themselves. She knew it was going to happen at some point. She had tried to prepare herself for it but at that moment, she knew she could never had prepared for it. That feeling that she got knowing that person would never live again no matter what pain they also inflected on countless others.

The other two pirates shifted their focus onto the other ship. One managed to knock out its main thrusters and it started to spiral down towards the planet Maya had explored just minutes before. The pirates chased it down, ready to destroy it and take whatever they could salvage.

Maya wasn't going to allow it. She wasn't going to have killed one person for nothing. Her ship rattled and jolted as she pushed it as fast as it could go. She charged in behind the two ships, just at their tails. Warning alarms and red flashing lights filled the cockpit but she ignored them for as long as she could. She fired on one of the ships. It broke off course and exploded in a burst of bright light.

Maya immediately refocused, trying not to be consumed with the incredible amount of guilt that had been banging against the inside of her skull. She aimed at the last ship and fired. The ship spun out of the way once three shots had landed on its thruster and in a flash of bright white light, disappeared.

_"Hostile ships, destroyed-,"_ the AI started but cut itself off with another message and much higher importance. _"Atmospheric and intergalactic thrusters offline. Planetary reentry unadvisable."_

Maya pulled on the controls of her ship but it was no use. They wouldn't move. The ship was completely lifeless. It was plummeting down towards the planet's surface along with the other ship which Maya had tried to save. Both ships were unable to stop their descents at around 17,000 miles per hour. It Maya didn't find a way to slow down, the ship would be completely incinerated at reentry, with her inside.

"Computer, voice command!" Maya yelled as she still tried to pull the controls back. "Activate in-flight repair sequences!"

_"In-flight repair sequence locked out during atmospheric reentry."_

"Override!" She screamed as she slammed her fist down onto the left control, almost snapping it off.

There were a series of beeps before the AI returned, _"In-flight repair sequence override requires vocal authorization."_

"Maya Rea! Just activate it!" She screamed as a layer of orange fire covered the canopy and the temperature inside the cabin increased by 20 to 30 degrees.

There was a quiet ding and the in-flight repair systems engaged, Maya forced it to focus all its attention on repairing the atmospheric thrusters. The second thing she did—while trying to remain as calm as possible—was open a communication to the other ship that was falling just a few hundred feet in front of her.

The first thing she heard was static.

"Hello?" She asked but decided it best not to wait for a reply. "You need to activate your in-flight repair sequence. Your AI won't let you during reentry. Do you understand?"

More static.

_"Atmospheric thrusters — operational,"_ Maya's AI told her. _"Communication lost."_

"No!" Maya screamed as her ship automatically adjusted to the reentry speed required to keep the ship in one piece. The ship in front of her quickly fell away from her as her ship slowed.

She pushed the controls forwards—she wasn't going to let this ship and whoever was in it go down. She couldn't. She had already ended the lives of two peoples. She wasn't going to let it reach three.

It was a quick burst of speed that generated a wave of heat so hot that Maya almost thought the leather of the seat she sat on had started to burn. She pushed the ship harder, faster. It ducked under the other blue colored ship as the planet's surface came unbelievably close at an unbelievable speed.

Then Maya pulled the controls back and the ship jolted up and slammed into the bottom of the other ship. She kept pulled back on the controls even though it felt like she could snap them clean off. Sweat dripped from her eyebrows and forehead and she tried to blink to stop them from falling into her eyes.

Then the ship started to level out. Both ships started to slow down, the ground only twenty to thirty feet away. Maya tried to dodge trees and cacti and the occasional hill and found a flat spot to land. Although landing two ships while only able to pilot one was difficult but she was just happy to have survived the reentry. The most deadly parts.

Her ship slammed onto the ground and immediately powered off—the other ship just a few feet away. Maya had to push the canopy open when it didn't open by itself. She climbed out of the ship and landed on the sandy ground. She was… happy to be alive.

Although two others were not. They were dead by her hands. One escaped but who knows if they survived the jump. That number could have risen and Maya would have no idea.

She rose her shaky hands up to the side of her helmet and pulled it off. She tossed it to the ground and took the rest of her suit off while tears freely fell from her emotionless face. She killed them. But maybe she could save whoever was in the ship just a few feet from her.

She crossed the distance between her Fighter and the large, blue, rectangular-shaped Hauler, trying to think of what she could do to keep whoever was in there, alive. She had almost no medical experience. The most she had managed to 'clean up' was a nasty cut on her leg. All it needed was some disinfectant and a bandage.

The Hauler was a lot bigger than her Fighter. That meant a lot of the things that she had gotten used to when it came to operating her ship was different than the Hauler. One major difference was that she wasn't able to enter the ship through the black glass canopy that was large and square, but by through a circular hatch on the bottom off the ship.

Maya ducked under the ship and found the hatch. Much like how she needed to get out her ship, she was able to pry the hatch open with her fingers. A small metal ladder slowly descended from the inside of the ship and stopped in front of Maya. She grabbed hold of the rung in front of her and started climbing.

The ladder immediately retracted back up into the ship as soon as Maya was securely on it. Then it stopped and the hatch closed behind her. She was in a small open area behind the cockpit of the ship. There were several metal crates with large white tarps pulled over them. It looked like whoever was piloting this ship was transporting some kind of good across the system.

She made her way over to the cockpit where she saw the helmet of the pilot. _Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead. I can't handle that right now, please._ Her mind suddenly burst into the thought of all the possible things that she would see on the other side of that black leather chair. If it would be some alien that wished her a merry day and thanked her for saving their ship but they _really _needed to be on their way, or it would be someone who was killed in a way no one ever deserved to witness.

She peeked around the chair to see someone in an orange Exosuit with light blue details and a golden colored visor on their helmet. They looked unharmed—that was until Maya noticed the large piece of metal that had made its home inside the person's side. Red blood covering its sleek, smooth surface.

Red blood. Whoever was in this suit was human. And by the slow rise and fall of their chest, they were still alive. Maya didn't know what to do. She slowly backed away at the sight of the piece of jagged metal and physically recoiled, doing her best to not involuntarily run at the sight of blood.

Despite her efforts, though, she turned away and rubbed her forehead with the tips of her fingers.

"How am I going to do this?" She asked. No one was there to reply. Except for the _human_ that was sitting, wounded on the chair behind her. She needed to help them. But she's never done anything like this before. How was she going to take a piece of metal out of that person's side without any proper training?

_"Warning: Incoming Storm,"_ her AI _graciously_ warned her.

"Shut up and tell me what I'm supposed to do," Maya almost screamed. Her heart was racing and her breaths were fast and jagged. She was trying her best to stay calm. "Voice command, medical scan."

_"Human male. LifeSupport systems — offline. Puncture wound in the abdomen, 1.342 centimeters from right lung. No vital organs damaged. Patient losing blood, lethal blood loss in — 35 minutes."_

"No no no no no no no," Maya said spinning around pushing her palms into the side of her head. This was like nothing she had ever had to do and she was starting to panic. "Walk me though, tell me what I need to do."

_"Procedure requiring a minimum of two people."_

"I don't have two people. It's only me."

_"Locate Nearest medical kit."_

"Ping it," Maya quickly said but she didn't need to realize that she had left her helmet outside.

_"Helmet heads-up-display not found."_

Maya looked up towards the ship's front window. She saw her ship and the pieces of her suit lying on the ground next to it. Behind it, there was a massive cloud of brown dust. It was moving _fast_. She would have no time to go get her suit before it hit. Within seconds, the window went dark as the storm hit the ship and covered it in sand. Maya _forced_ a wave a calm to pass over her body. She pushed everything as far back as she could, letting only determination surface.

"Alright," she said as she reached down to the side of her left thigh. Attached was a small square-shaped pocket made from the same fabric her pants were made from. Inside was a small metal device which a wire the size of a thread coming out of it. "Alright."

The wire weaved up her back and eventually thickened as it connected to the small earpieces inside her ears. This was her AI. The thing that had saved her too many times for her to count, something she should have been infinitely grateful for but just found it annoying instead, just strapped to the side of her leg.

She pulled the device out and flipped it around in her hands. She found a small glass screen on one of the widest sides. It looked almost like one of the mobile communication devices used by the twenty-first-century humans but a lot chunkier.

"Show me it," she said as the screen flicked to life.

The screen displayed a topographical map of the area around where she had parked both ships. Not helpful information. She used her thumb and index finger to move the map around and zoom in towards a red dot on the map. She zoomed so far in that the topographical map was no a map of the inside of the ship he was standing in. She could even see an outline of herself looking down at the screen.

The red dot was to the right of the ship, behind her. She spun around and found a pile of metal crates. She almost dropped the device as she lunged towards the crates and pulled the large tarp off of them. She managed to get into two, the rest being unlocked. She pulled out things from the crate she didn't recognize. Not by the way they looked. A box packed with liquid ferrite. A glass tube of fluorescent gas. Another tube of a purple-pink colored slime that seemed to be moving.

She kept taking _things_ out of the crates until she laid her hands on the cold, white corner of the medical kit. She grabbed it and pulled it out, dropping the canister of chlorine to the floor. She ripped it open as she walked back towards the injured pilot. She set the medical kit on the ground and slowly, with as much strength as she could muster, turned the chair around.

"Alright," she said again. It seemed to be the only word that could keep her calm, keep her from panicking. "Tell me what to do."

Her AI responded, _"Top section, pocket 4."_

She scanned the top half of the medical kit. Across several things, she didn't know the names to, except basic first aid like disinfectant and bandages. Then she spotted the small white pocket with black lettering stitched into the fabric.

**T4**

She reached into the pocket and found several long, fragile sticks. She pulled one out. It was just an inch long and white. It felt like she could break it in half with just as much effort it took to snap her fingers. She knew exactly what it was. And she knew exactly what she needed to do with them.

She slowly stood up, obviously with a small sense of urgency, and lifted her hands towards the helmet of the person sitting in front of her. She grabbed it and with a twist, it unlatched from the suit. She pulled it off.

Just as her AI had told her, a man's face was revealed when she took the helmet off and set it on the ground. He had short brown hair and didn't look that much older than herself. He had his eyes closed and it sounded like he was still breathing.

She didn't want to do it. But she had too. Maya pulled herself as much together as she could and held each end of the white stick with both her index fingers and thumbs and held the stick just under the man's nose. She counted to 3 in her mind. _One… two… three-_

_Snap._

* * *

The pain wasn't all that bad for him. That's the thing about an unconscious mind. It worked on keeping the body alive as best as it could but didn't focus on the _other_ things. Like simulating pain. It didn't hurt at all, just a dull pressure, until the darkness around him took form and swirled and twisted.

Then his eyes snapped open. And the pain was _all_ too real. It was right in his side. He didn't know what happened. First, he was traveling to Vuyatiwai III, carrying some cargo, then the pirates attacked. Everything else was blurry, his mind was still trying to figure out what was happening around it and the pain was not helping.

Then there she was. Looking into his green eyes. It took him off guard to see someone else after so long. Another human. She was saying something to him but he couldn't understand. Her face, it seemed so stern, as hard as a rock but what he saw in her eyes took him even further off his guard. He saw fear. Unbelievable fear. She seemed young but small slivers of gray had started to show at the roots of her hair which hung down her left shoulder.

"What- what happened?" He managed to ask.

"It's alright," she replied. Her voice was soft, soothing compared to the constant ringing in his ears. She looked down at his side and her stern expression broke. "Everything is going to be alright." She didn't even seem to believe herself.

"What's your name?" He asked. He knew that something down there _hurt_ like hell but it had become a custom to always ask that question when meeting someone new. No matter the circumstances. Well, some. But not all.

Her hazel colored eyes shot back up to meet his, "You need a doctor. I don't think I can do this myself."

Then she spun around away from him almost like someone was talking in her ear but she had forgotten that it was there.

_"Patient's wounds exceed untrained safety standards. Please proceed to the nearest space station and contact its local medical professional."_

Maya almost ripped the earpieces from her ears and screamed. Her nerves were as on edge as they could be. He was talking to her. She didn't know how to. Even if she had other friends than her sister, carrying out a conversation with someone who was _bleeding out_ wasn't what she (or anyone for that matter) would call natural.

She swung back around, "Let's save… all of that… for later. You know this system, right? Where's the nearest space station?"

He slowly shook her head and winced, "Orbiting Vuyatiwai I, the Paradise planet."

Maya flinched, tried to stop herself but couldn't, "This ship has to somewhat operational."

She diverted her focus off of something she couldn't handle onto something she was all too familiar with. Something she almost felt at home with.

She quickly helped the man down off of the pilot's seat and onto the floor. Then she took the seat and sat down, turning herself in front of the controls of the ship as she did.

"Voice command," she said to her AI. "Scan starship systems and begin automated repair systems."

_"Minor systems damaged. Environmental Shielding — offline. Cabin Temperature Control — Offline."_

"That's good enough," Maya replied, slowly her confidence leaking back into her. "Activate LaunchThrusters."

"The ship won't make it," the man said from behind her. "She's as good as gone."

Maya shook her head. She had been around too many starships to believe that. She had pushed her ship to the limit just minutes ago and it survived. "It will. Just trust me."

"I don't even know your name," he said back, the pain getting even worse as the ship lifted into the air.

A few seconds passed. It felt like she had almost _forgotten_ her name, "Ma-Maya. Sorry. My name is Maya."

"That's an-," he groaned as a wave of pain and nausea flooded over him. "That's an interesting name. Never- Never heard of that one before. Sounds kind of- kind of familiar still."

"My full name is Amayaris Rea," Maya replied. She seemed, to her standards, to be getting a hang of this 'whole talking' thing. She still had a tone that sounded like she was speaking to a non-sentient piece of technology though. "Named after my home system."

"You mean-," the man said. "Earth? Our home system. Amayaris?"

She nodded as she lifted the ship towards the sky and through the cloud of dust that surrounded them. She saw just a fraction of her ship still sitting on the ground, being abandoned. She promised it that she would come back.

"Yeah, that's it."

The man laughed which turned into a violent cough, "That got- got to be- the coolest name I have ev- ever heard."

Maya shrugged. Obviously, she thought that her name fit her perfectly—it was her name—but never thought of it as '_cool'_ before. It was a '_cool'_ reference to humanity's birthplace but that never hit her the way it had coming from someone else.

"What's your name?" She asked, veering the conversation away from her as the ship broke through the planet's atmosphere.

The man coughed again, "The name's Jacob. Nothing much."

Maya managed to find the switches responsible for activating a Pulse jump towards the local space station. She hadn't piloted a ship other than a Fighter so suddenly having to find her way around the Hauler's cockpit was a little bit difficult.

"We're ready to make a Pulse jump," she called back to her injured passenger named Jacob. "Just… hold onto something."

Jacob smiled despite the pain, "I'll certainly try."

Five seconds later, the ship was propelled through space at the slow speed of light.

Centuries ago, if you asked someone living on Earth if it was possible to get something that had _mass_ to the speed of light, they would say it wasn't possible. It wasn't possible to get to the speed of light _or_ faster. But yet, here Maya was. Sitting in a ship that was traveling through the space between the planet, and the space station, at a cruise speed of roughly 670 billion miles per hour.

They reached the space station in 43 seconds. The ship pulled out of the jump and dropped to a speed of about 600 _thousand_ miles an hour in just seconds. The station was shaped like a four sides diamond and had a long cylinder hanging off of the bottom which metal rings wrapping around it that was slowly rotating.

Maya piloted the ship into the same blue triangle-shaped opening in the station. The station took the controls away from her and parked the ship in an open space. The inside of the hangar was just the same as Maya's home space station except a little bit smaller. It only had the capacity of eight ships instead of the twenty or thirty her station could hold.

She swung around and stood up from the pilot's seat. She looked down at Jacob who looked like someone trying to stay conscious. His blood, pooling on the ground below him. She needed to get him to a doctor quickly before he bled out.

She opened the hatch and the ladder slowly descended. Then she helped Jacob onto his feet by wrapping his arm around her neck.

"I'm going to climb down, then you will," she said as she made sure he was holding onto something before she let go. "Then, you'll be fine."

"Doesn't seem all that… reassuring," Jacob said as Maya began to climb down the ladder. He tried to follow her.

"Believe me, I know."


	4. The Transmission

Maya sat in a long, empty corridor. There was nothing around her but a closed door. They had taken Jacob away to be 'fixed up' as they put it. Leaving her alone, and not too sure about what to do. They asked her to stay here, telling her that she was the only contact they had for him. Their databanks came back negative for any kind of family or history.

That was why she didn't take _his_ ship and fly it back to her home, where we ViewScreen was probably ringing. Her sister back from school, waiting for her big sister to pick up the phone. She wasn't there to pick it up. She was worse than late today. Today, she was gone.

* * *

Eventually, she had fallen asleep. Space stations are only 'exciting' or even a little bit bearable if you belong on the one your currently in. Maya, if she was on her own station, could have gone up to her room, had a chat with Sarah, gotten something to eat, had a good night's rest on her own bed instead of the metal bench she had fallen asleep on then. If you didn't belong. You have very limited access to anything. She couldn't even walk down to the station's cafeteria and pick up some food and a drink.

Not that she was particularly hungry. She had eaten dinner the night before and her stomach was accustomed to having a little something to eat every other night. Water or maybe a cup of coffee would have hit the spot. She had been racking her head so hard of how she could contact her sister. Somehow get a message all the way out there, that she had fallen asleep. She was lucky though, in a way, that she had left her suit on the planet's surface. She knew when she woke up that her body was thankful for it. Falling asleep in a bulky plastic suit wasn't the most comfortable thing in the galaxy.

Hours after she had woken up, still nothing had happened and she made her way back into the common area of the station, one of the two balconies that looked over the space station's runway. The left side houses the normal bar/cafeteria but the right just held a few couches of different lengths and shapes all with a hexagonal glass table in front of them and potted plants to each of their sides. On the wall across the balcony from the runway were several countertops where local merchants were selling their goods.

Maya found a lonesome cushioned chair away from everyone else and sat down in it. It was a _lot_ more comfortable than the metal bench in the corridor. She almost wished that she had fallen asleep here instead of there. She watched the ships come and go, landing on their pads, watched the pilots of each ship get out, do their business, then get back it and launch back into space. Each ship was incredibly loud and blew warm wind across Maya's face as it zoomed past but she didn't mind it. She just couldn't stop thinking about her sister.

* * *

Jacob was told that he was good to go. He didn't quite believe them though. They were Geks after all. It was a little bit… out of character for a group of Geks to be doctors rather than merchants who would do almost anything to turn a profit. Although he felt fine.

The marvels of advanced technology. _Want to cross half the galaxy in a matter of days?_ Here's a HyperDrive. _Don't really want to broom up microscopic dust particles or that puddle of engine grease off your space station's runway?_ Here, have this tube of tiny robots to do it for you. _Got in a freak accident with some pirates who wanted to kill you and take your stuff and now you have a massive piece of metal in your side and your bleeding out?_ We'll have you ship-shape in no time.

Jacob was glad for it of course. He stepped out of the medical room they woke him up in, with a black shirt and jeans on, and into the corridor where he expected that woman to be waiting for him.

He rubbed the side of his head, "What was her name?"

His mind was still coming off of the drugs the doctors had used to keep him unconscious. He hadn't ever really been _completely_ switched off when it came to consciousness, even during a HyperDrive jump. Never really woken up after a good wack in the head and thought, _Now, that's what it feels like! Never gonna do that again._

Now that he _had_ felt what it feels like to be completely, 100 percent unconscious, he didn't think he wanted to know how it felt again. It was a bit disconcerting in his opinion, even when he _hadn't_ gotten hit in the head really hard. He didn't like waking up and not knowing where he was. Or even not knowing _when_ he had been knocked out and when he had woken up. That's probably why he didn't really enjoy space travel.

It was a hard thing to avoid though that last bit. The world he was born on, Earth, was surrounded by space. Like a fish in water. He hadn't left the atmosphere until he was 19 and he was a-okay with it. Despite his friends complaining that he was the reason they didn't get to go on their big trip to Mars. He just didn't like space. But Earth couldn't sustain him forever. He needed to leave.

Then he _really_ didn't like space. He started to learn of the other alien races out there. Their history. Their pasts. What made them unique. Turns out a _Hirk the Great_ of the Vy'keen was the one who managed to piss the Atlas off at everyone so that was a plus. Jacob did get to talk about his own system. Humanity's past. Which to him was interesting, not fascinating, just interesting. Humanity wasn't all that fascinating to him, he was really interested in everyone else's stories. But when they asked about Amayaris, he told them about Amaya-

"-Maya," he said as he snapped his fingers. "That's what her name was. Maya"

_But where was she?_ He thought. He looked down each side of the corridor, suddenly finding that he was lost. He shrugged and took a left thinking: _How big can this station really be? If that's not the way, I'll turn back. It's my station after all._

Luckily he had taken the right way (luckily because the space station was a lot bigger than Jacob had thought) and he found himself standing on the left balcony above the station's runway. His nose filled with the smell of cooking food and his stomach growled. He couldn't _remember_ the last time he had anything to eat.

Luckily again, he was at his own home space station, he only ever been in his room or the runway. He pulled a thin plastic card that digitally stored his earned units from his pocket (basically an intergalactic debit card) and walked up to the metal bar.

"What can I get for you?" A Gek asked in its native language.

Jacob smiled at the Gek and picked up a menu from the bar where holographic displays of each course danced across its surface.

"I'll get the Baked Eggs," Jacob started, then Maya popped into his mind. She wouldn't be able to purchase anything at this station, even food. "Uh- two orders of that. As well as- oooh- as well as one Jam Fluffer."

He smiled again as he set the menu back down. The Gek turned towards the kitchen, clearly bored, and called back his order. Jacob stood there, eyes darting around the bar as he waited for his food. The Gek stood in front of him and tapped something on the screen in front of it.

Jacob had started to tap on the counter with his fingers a tune that was playing in his head. Then, finally, his food came.

"730," the Gek said as it slid the plates out onto the bar. "Units obviously."

Jacob handed the card to the Gek who swiped it across the screen and handed it back. Jacob wasn't all that concerned with his bank balance of units. The job he had paid well enough for him to not be constantly worried about if he could pay for his next meal.

Maya on the other hand. He already knew she had to. Explorers had a certain look, a certain demeanor unique to their trade. They were all so _mindless_ to him. Every explorer going back and forth and back forth and back forth every _single_ day. Barely any pay. He knew, also, why so many people did it. It wasn't easy, it was just less as dangerous as the other jobs out there. Jacob had a massive scar now on his side because of what he did to make a living for himself.

Maya was different though. He didn't have the time, or the conscious awareness to really _think_ about it when he first saw her. The way she looked, stern, strong on the outside. Her face as hard as a rock. Almost emotionless, except for her eyes. That's what he saw. He saw the fear, the sadness, the loneliness. That's what was different about her.

No other explorer had looked at him like that. Whether they're from InExCor or RAIN or the less as known Trailblazer Corp. Whether they're Vy'keen or human. He had never seen that look in _anyone's_ eyes. He had tried to hide the fact that (under layers of humor and just barely synthesized happiness) he felt the same way.

* * *

She had just lifted her head from the back of the chair she had been sitting on. Maya saw a man walking towards her with three white plates in his hands. One on each hand the last he managed to balance on his right lower arm. She barely recognized him.

She sat up in her chair as he walked over and placed the plates on the table in front of the two cushions chairs, one Maya was occupying. "Here's your breakfast."

Then he sat down in the other chair and started to eat the food off of one plate. It looked like it was some kind of egg with bits of meat and seasoning cooked inside it. "Breakfast?"

Jacob nodded as he swallowed a mouth full of egg, "Yeah, breakfast. Thought you might be hungry."

Maya's stomach almost jumped at that last word. She might've trained it _not_ to be hungry for the days where she couldn't eat, but that didn't mean that it wouldn't jump on the chance to eat something when it could.

She pulled the other plate of eggs towards her and slowly started to eat. She also noticed the other plate which had a small cake on top of it about the size of a cupcake. She dropped her eyebrows and eyed the cake. _Cake for breakfast?_

"How can you afford all of this?" She asked once she had finished her food. She wasn't one to talk while she ate. That probably has to do with her not having anyone to talk with to begin.

"I don't usually get this much food," Jacob said as he cut the cake in half with his fork. "You look like you could eat something so I got a little bit more. Not gonna put a _huge_ dent in the old bank account. Also didn't know if you had a sweet tooth or not- cake?"

Maya shook her head, the last time she had anything sweet was… a very long time from them and she didn't really plan on changing. "I'm fine."

He held the remaining half of the cake on the plate out in front of her once he had shoved the other in his mouth. He gently shook it, "Come on. I owe it to you."

"You paid off your 'debt'-," Maya said with air quotes. "-with the eggs. I don't need more."

He squeezed his smile into the straightest face he could and looked at her sideways, "Just eat the cake."

Maya couldn't stop herself before she smiled. The way she looked at him. Even if he was trying to look serious, he just was filled with a type of joy that Maya had been lacking for a very long time. He was a happy person. Last time she checked, she hadn't seen a lot of happy people, including herself. That's why she slowly shook her head and took the plate from Jacob.

"Thank you," Jacob said overly emphasizing the 'th' in thank. "I give this half of Jam Fluffer to you be- because I- I need more of your help." His tone suddenly serious.

* * *

"I'm on the run," he said simply. "They're trying to kill me, I don't know why."

Maya almost jumped out of her seat bu forced herself to stay still, "Are you a pirate?"

He quickly shook his head, "No no no no no no. _I'm_ not the pirate. I'm just a normal cargo transporter. They're the ones trying to _steal_ my cargo I'm supposed to be transporting."

"Why you?" She asked. She needed to get every _bit_ of information before she accepted anything even if she didn't know what it was yet. "What makes _you_ the target?"

"Easy pickings," Jacob suggested. "My cargo ship isn't what we would call… 'geared' for any type of battle. It can't stand up for itself when it needs to. I would've been dead if you weren't there to help- which I am grateful for by the way."

She slowly scanned his face, trying to get anything from even _that_. Anything her limited amounts of trust could feed off of. There wasn't much to go off of but she wasn't about to write him off just yet. He still had done enough to gain a little bit of her trust. Enough to know what it was he wanted.

"What is it that you want from me?" Maya asked.

"Nothing much," Jacob said as he sat up straighter. "Nothing much. I just need someplace to hide. The situation couldn't be any more perfect."

"Perfect for what?"

"To fake my death," he said but immediately saw the look on Maya's face and reached his hand out almost like he thought that if he could change her mind if he just pulled on an invisible rope hard enough. "Wait wait wait wait! I know what you're thinking already. _'What this guy blabbering about faking his death? It can't be that serious, come on. And, I don't even have any room for ya anyway'_,"—he threw in a shrug—"-but it is. They won't leave me alone. I am their target. Now, they think I'm dead and you showed up. It was something I've been waiting for for a _long_ time."

Maya forced her face to soften and just _relax_. She didn't know how she would react when dealing with other people. The last person she had spoken with before Jacob for _months_ had only been her sister. She didn't know what she would be like but because of her perfectly still back and set jawline, she didn't think she was that well at giving away her trust.

"Is it really that bad?"

Jacob quickly nodded and looked around, "I'm surprised I'm even talking to you right now."

"So you want somewhere to hide," She said straight. "You want to hide with me?"

"I mean, I don't want to impose."

Maya bit the inside of her bottom lip as she thought. She never had to _think_ so deeply in her line of exploring every single boring planet she saw. Her mind worked like a machine. Programed to move the same way, the same time. Her thoughts all organized into a path where they didn't get out of hand or messed up. She didn't even know she thought that way until then because she never had to before.

She looked up and scanned Jacob's face again. His body language, the way he sat with his elbows on the edge of the table and his hands clamped together in the middle of the table. The whites of his knuckles showing. She had never seen someone like him. He could be serious at times but completely laid back like he was at home chatting with some friends. Even if he was talking to a total stranger.

"I can even just stay for a day and then figure something out after," Jacob said when Maya still hadn't replied.

She shook her head and looked back down at his hands. She wasn't one for split-second decisions, she knew that. But this time, this _one_ time where she needed to make her first _thoughtful_ decision, she wanted to make her first split-second decision for years.

Her shaking head slowly turned into a nod, "I'll let you. I'll help you. I don't know how I'm going to but I'm going to find a way, alright?"

He nodded, "Yes, I got it, 100 percent. Thank you. Don't worry, after a day, I will be out of your hair."

"You don't need to," she said. She had been completely alone and been so _bored_ for so long that she felt like she was making rash decisions. "I'll help you."

"You'll- You'll help me?" He asked sitting forwards. "Why would you want to do that. You're already going—and already have—helped me much more than I could ask for."

"Let's just say that a life of loneliness and boredom does that to you," Maya replied, looked away from him and towards the runway of ships. She also wasn't a person to be honest with someone who they had just met but she said that she would help him so she was going to have to be a little bit more honest than usual.

There were a couple of minutes of silence before Jacob broke it, "So. What's the plan?"

Maya sat up and looked around, "That would be the problem. I don't really have a plan yet. First off, I need to get my ship off that planet's surface _and_ I need to contact a probably pretty pissed off sister."

"A sister?" Jacob asked.

Maya closed her eyes and mentally kicked herself for letting that little detail slip. Jacob just seemed so trustworthy, she was letting her guard down. She rested her elbow on the table's corner and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger. She sighed, "Yes. A sister."

"Why would she be angry at you?"

Maya stood up and looked down at him, "_That_ is a question, for another time. We should get going."

"Wh- Right, yes, going," he said as he stood up and followed her down to the runway.

They quickly boarded Jacob's ship. He cringed at the sight of his own dried blood but continued to the driver's seat.

"You know," he said as he sat down in the chair and turned towards the controls. "You didn't have to put me on the ground like that."

Maya crossed her arms across her chest, "Why is that?"

Jacob reached across the controls and press a small button to his right. Then, along both sides of the inside of the ship, two metal benches slid out from the wall. They looked like they could sit 6 people combined. That ship wasn't just for carrying cargo, but also for carrying a large number of people as well.

Maya groaned as she sat down, "I've had enough of metal benches."

"Is that so?" Jacob asked as he prepared the ship for liftoff. Then, even though Maya couldn't see out the front window, the ship lifted off and blasted into space. "Why is that?"

"I spent the night on one as I waited for you," Maya replied trying to put as much sarcastic anger into her voice as she could.

Jacob laughed, "Ha! Sorry about that. Did you forget about the couches they had in the common area?"

"My station doesn't have that," she said. "Mine is a lot less decorated than yours is. Strictly for business."

"And that's why I'm not explorer," Jacob replied.

"And _that's_ why I'm not being attacked by pirates," she replied getting a little more comfortable in the conversation. The first conversation she had with anyone besides her sister.

"Oh, good one- that was there. That was good. Definitely going to remember that," Jacob replied. Then his voice changed, "We're getting ready for a Pulse jump. Hold on to your shoes."

Then the ship launched into the speed of light. It only took seconds for them to reach where Maya had left her ship.

* * *

It wasn't that hard to repair with the resources Jacob had in the back of his ship. The storm had long settled and covered her ship with dust and sand. She had to unbury her suit from the ground to get to it. It took hours still to repair the ship and it allowed her time to think about what she was going to do about Jacob.

Getting Jacob from the hangar bay of her station would be easy. There would be no way for anyone to notice him especially if they arrived exactly as everyone else was landing. The only problem was getting Jacob's ship _inside_ the station to begin with. Everyone who was assigned there had a designated landing pad. Maya's was number 13. Jacob didn't have one. If he landed his massive Hauler, someone wouldn't have a pad to land on.

She sat in her ship's cockpit with open communication to Jacob's ship.

"We're going to have to figure out a way to fit both of us in this ship," Maya said though the link. She turned around and looked over the back of the pilot's seat. There was enough room behind for someone to sit on the floor but it was incredibly dangerous during a HyperDrive jump.

_"Is there any other hangar at your station?"_ Jacob asked, his voice tinged with static. _"Maybe a backdoor you don't remember?"_

Maya shook her head and turned back to the controls, "Maybe. This is really risky. I would rather be prepared than not."

_"Oh!"_ Jacob exclaimed. _"I have an idea. Tell me your um- station's name."_

This was her chance to trust her. Once she told him the name, there was no going back, "Yokoju Sphere."

_"Ah- alright… give me a second,"_ Jacob said slowly. Maya could hear the sound of tapping and clicking over the transmission. _"I'm sending something over… now."_

Before Jacob finished speaking, a small ding rang though the cockpit and a small red light flashed on one of the display screens to Maya's left. She pressed on the light and a large holographic projection popped up in front of her. She had to lean back in her seat to see it all but when she did, she immediately recognized it as her home space station. There were two red dots at the front and back of the station. One was right in front of the main hangar bay.

"Wait, what?" Maya asked. "Where did you get this?"

_"My job requires that I know the ins and outs of most stations,"_ Jacob replied. _"I have tons and tons of station schematics in here"_—Maya heard him slap something metal inside his ship—_"Almost all stations have a backdoor used for loading and unloading cargo."_

Maya shook her head again, still weighing the risks in her mind, "I don't know Jacob. This is really risky. If I get caught doing this… I need this job. I won't make it without it."

_"You know I'm not forcing you to do anything,"_ Jacob said. _"It's all your call."_

Her eyes darted back and forth from the holographic display to the world outside, searching them for any kind of answer. Risking your only way of making an income just to help out someone you only have known for a day or two was almost stupid. Idiotic. But Maya felt like the universe was giving her Jacob. Somehow, she felt like she was going to need him sometime in the future. Or maybe it was her brain trying to come up with an excuse to keep him around.

She activated her LaunchThrusters and the ship rose into the air. "Follow me. I assume you have the coordinates."

_"Yep, I do. On your tail,"_ Jacob replied, then the link went silent.

Maya flew above the planet's surface before she pulled the controls back and the ship turned towards the sky. The ship shook and rattled as it gained enough velocity to escape the planet's atmosphere. More than usual. She hoped that the repairs she and Jacob did to the ship were enough. The last thing she wanted to do was plummet back to the planet's surface because her ship fell apart with _her_ inside.

But the rattling slowly stopped as she broke through the atmosphere and everything suddenly became very, _very_ quiet. Because there was nothing for the sound to travel through in space, there was _no_ sound. Everything was silent except for Maya's breath. Sound was only simulated using the ship's sensors. There was no way to hear what a sound _actually_ sounded like without being on a planet's surface. A planet with an atmosphere that is.

She was about ready to active her HyperDrive when her AI warned her about an incoming transmission.

"Identify its source," Maya said wanting to confirm that it was from Jacob's ship before she answered.

_"Transmission source — unknown,"_ the AI replied.

Maya was about to dismiss the transmission but her entire ship shut down and re-powered itself. When the ship powered back on, a message was left on the center console of the ship's controls.

_16 / 16 / 16 / 16_

"Voice command. Run a system-wide diagnostic."

_"Running system-wide diagnostic,"_ the AI started, then returned a few seconds later. _"All systems functioning normally."_

"Then tell me what just happened?"

_"Unable to reply. Unknown command."_

Maya sighed, "Never mind."

_"Incoming transmission,"_ the AI said again.

"Another one? Identify its source."

_"Source unknown,_" her AI said.

"Answer it," Maya said deciding that it wasn't that big a risk to answer some unknown transmission.

Her ears filled with harsh static. Maya jumped and ripped the earpieces from her ears. The static was so loud it felt like she was going to be deafened by it. She slowly put them back in as the static dissipated.

Then a voice broke through the transmission. It was hard to tell if it was male or female. Or even what race of alien it was.

_"You are not-,_" the voice said slowly. A wave of static blocked out the rest of its words. _"-alone. Please, identify yourself. I'm-."_

More static. This time the voice didn't continue but the transmission was still open.

Maya was beyond confused. She did the only thing she could think of doing at that moment.

"Maya Rea. That's my name."

The voice returned. It somehow sounded calm but also angry at the same time.

_"You left me- Why did you-,"_ the voice kept getting drowned out by a wave of static.

Maya didn't know what she was hearing. She was beyond confused. The voice told her that she had left them (whoever _they_ were). The voice recognized her name. She hadn't heard of anyone named the same name she had. There was no way the voice was talking about someone else.

Maya felt a wave of sadness and guilt wash over her. Like whoever she was talking to was an old friend that she had no choice but to betray. But she didn't remember them.

"I'm sorry."

_"Don't lie to me. You-,"_ the voice shot back making Maya flinch. _"Even the others did not-."_

The static was a lot stronger this time. Maya knew she had little time left to understand what was happening. "The others? Who are the others?"

The voice tried to speak but the static was too much. Then it all disappeared. The voice, the static, even though the channel was still open.

_"Tracking transmission origin."_

Maya looked up from the center console which still displayed its mysterious message. She was more than a little shaken. "Who- who told you to do that?"

_"Transmission origin coordinates received,_" the AI said as a small red hexagon appeared on her ship's canopy. It was hovering at the bottom of a distant planet.

Maya shook herself out of the state of shock and pushed a few virtual buttons on the controls, opening a transmission to Jacob's ship.

_"Hey, what's wrong?"_ He said when she didn't say anything. _"Did something break?"_

"Jacob," Maya started. "I think we've got a problem."


	5. The Call

They warped back to the system Maya lived in. She had explained the mysterious transmission to Jacob and the coordinates her computer gave her without her asking for them. They decided it best to figure out what that was all about after they found Jacob a way into the station. Maya still had things to sort out before she would leave the station for a more extended period.

Jacob grabbed ahold of his controls, "Stay as far from the front of the station as possible. Yep, got that."

_"We don't want anyone to see you until you are inside of the station,"_ Maya said to him. Her voice in his ears. Far louder than it should be. _"I'll come around front. They won't suspect me being back earlier in the day. I'll meet you in the back hangar. Just stay put until I find you. Alright?"_

Jacob nodded even though Maya didn't have a way to see him. He caught himself before his silence was noted, "Yep- uh- yes. Loud and clear."

The transmission cut and Maya's ship flew past his with a bright blue trail of light following after it. He watched the ship spiral towards the space station and finally into the bright blue opening of light. He could see the ship jolt as the station took control of it and guided it to an empty pad.

Jacob sighed and turned his ship to the space behind the station. Then, he activated his ship's PulseEngine. The ship lurched forwards and quickly accelerated to the speed of light. The space station that was once in front of him was _long_ gone in only splits of a second.

Once he had traveled for only three seconds, Jacob disengaged the PulseEngine and slowly turned the heavy hauler towards the backside of the space station which was now a small, gray, hexagonal prism just the size of his thumb. It amazed him how _fast_ he was traveling during a jump.

He loved the feeling of acceleration. The feeling of that unknown force pushing you back in your seat as you slowly moved faster and faster and _faster_. But, he knew that same feeling would kill him at these speeds. He would be squished like a small grape when you throw it with all your strength at a wall.

He activated the PulseEngine again and flew back towards the station. The ship automatically pulled out of the jump when it got close to the station because of 'space station disturbances'. He knew that was just a way the manufacturers of starships stopped people from crashing into the space station at light speed just because they had a little bit too much to drink the night before.

He scanned the backside of the station, looking for some kind of hole. An opening for him to pilot his ship in. The small holographic projection of the station at his left showed a small red dot at the bottom right of the station but he couldn't see anything. _Usually they're big enough to see at this distance._

He piloted his ship closer to the station as he flew towards that section of it. The gray paneling didn't change at all. There was no sign of an entryway. Still, he kept moving closer and closer towards the station.

"There has to be some kind of shielding," Jacob said out loud. "Or maybe a holographic door. That would be cool. Not sure why a station like this would need one though."

But Jacob was right. Right before he considered turning away because of how close his ship was from the hull of the station, he passed through an invisible bubble that revealed the small, triangular-shaped, dark opening.

The station didn't take control of his ship as he flew in and there weren't any landing pads for him to park his ship on but that was normal for him. Most stations didn't have a holographically protected cargo hangar but they all were the same on the inside. He landed his massive blue Hauler next to a large stack of metal boxes on top of a shipping container. He thought that it would be big enough to hide his ship. He hoped he was right.

_Maya shouldn't be long,_ he thought as he made his way out of his ship and found the doorway leading out of the mostly empty hangar. _It was her home station after all._

* * *

Maya couldn't believe how unfamiliar she was with her own home. Although she didn't use much of the station, no more than the two balconies, the runway, and her rooms, she thought she would've been more familiar with the endless white and black metal corridors all tucked away behind the gray metal outer shell of the station.

She recognized the station of course. If someone showed her a picture of it outside she would know which station it was, where it was located, even how many people lived on it. But if they showed her a picture of the _inside_. She would be completely lost.

She roamed around the long corridors, searching for the cargo hangar until she decided it best to just use her AI to its full potential.

"Computer, voice command" she whispered, just in case someone was listening. What she was attempting to do was _not_ allowed. She knew that but yet for some reason decided to do it anyway. To risk her's, _and_ her sister's future. It was something she did _not_ do often. She didn't even know why she was risking it.

_"Awaiting command."_

"Locate local station's cargo hangar," she said.

_"Local station's cargo hangar is off-limits to the common employee."_

"Common employee?" She whispered to herself. She had never heard that term before. Was that all she was? A common employee?

_"Accurate. Common employee."_

"I'm not talking to you," Maya snapped at her AI. "Bring me there anyway."

_"Not possible. Common employees are not allowed."_

A sharp flash of anger burst across Maya's face but quickly disappeared. "If you don't tell me how to get there. I will take you apart piece by piece _while_ you're still active."

The AI didn't reply for a total of 25 seconds before it slowly said, _"Discovering route to cargo hangar."_

Maya couldn't help but snicker as the AI led her down the corridors. Taking a left turn and then a right turn. Then another right and then left. She honestly didn't expect that to work. Maybe the AI was more sentient than she gave it credit for.

Eventually, she saw the round metal door with a black ViewScreen mounted next to it. There were white and red letters displayed on it.

Cargo Hangar

Employees NOT allowed

Maya completely ignored the warning and stepped up to the door. She almost ran into the door expecting it to open by itself, her nose coming just inches away from it. She slowly stepped back and noticed a keypad on the inside of the doorway.

She quietly swore to herself and spun around, hoping that no one was around to see her trying to get somewhere she wasn't allowed.

"Open communication to Jacob's AI," Maya said told her AI.

_"[140,424,213,231,421] [Jacobs] on record,"_ the AI replied. _"Please specify the subject's full name._

"Damn it," Maya managed to scream and whisper at the same time. He hadn't told her his last name. "Give me the last 'Jacob' I talked to. Can you do that?"

_"Unable to comply with request."_

"What-," Maya said but caught herself. "What requests can you comply with?"

_"Your personal artificial intelligent assistant is able to-,"_ The AI started but Maya interrupted.

"You don't seem to be very intelligent right now," Maya said as she rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. "I'm not either."

She dropped her hand from her head and looked towards the very locked door.

"How are we going to do this Jacob?"

* * *

Jacob leaned against the stack of metal crates. If he had a watch on, he would have checked it. Maya had been gone for around twenty minutes he guessed. Maybe 30. What was holding her up?

He _would_ have assumed that she knew the station she _lived_ in like the back of her hand but his own unfamiliarity with his station proved that most of the bulk and extra rooms and corridors, just weren't necessary for a single person. That's why the stations were so big in the first place because it needed to house a _lot_ of people. And the longer it took Maya to get in here, the longer it would take for them to get on to more important matters. Like that strange transmission she had received.

Another ten minutes later, he came to the conclusion that something was wrong. It should _not_ be taking her this long. He could tell that she was someone who worked hard and got the job done as quickly as she could.

"AI, voice command," Jacob said as he pushed himself off of the crates and slowly walked towards his ship. "Open transmission to Maya- uh Amayaris."

His AI's computerized voice with a hint of a British accent returned to him.

_"[1] [Amayaris] on record. Opening transmission."_

"Well that makes it easy," Jacob replied as the transmission connected to Maya's AI.

Her voice filled his ears in a whisper seconds later, _"Jacob? How to did you get in contact?"_

"There's not that many Maya's out there I guess," Jacob said. He shook his head getting focused. "You have been taking a _long_ time. What's wrong? Did anything happen?"

_"I'm currently-,"_ Maya started. It sounded like she tried either move something but or squeeze in between something. _"-hiding in a storage closet. The door to the hangar is locked behind a password. I had to hide when a group of people walked by. I can't get in."_

"I'll see what I can do on my side," Jacob said as he briskly walked from the stack of crates to the round metal door.

He found the keypad mounted to the wall and grabbed each side of its plastic casing. With a quick pull, the casing detached along with the numbered keys revealing wiring and small computer chips behind it as well as the small LED that displayed the numbers being entered. He managed to slip the ends of some of the wires out of their chips and reroute them. After a few tries, the door split into three sections and slid into the wall. Maya was standing on the other side.

She waved him towards her, "Come on. Let's go. We've wasted a lot of time already."

Then she broke off into a run in the opposite direction. Jacob followed down the long, seemingly endless corridor.

* * *

Maya lightly tapped the base of her metal door with the toe of her boot and it slid open. She walked through and Jacob followed her in. The door slid back closed behind him.

"Nice place," Jacob said as he slowly turned in a circle, scanning the room.

The room he had just stepped into was nice. A lot nicer than he expected. The first room he stepped into was like three rooms in one. There was a white leather couch to his left which was across from a brown wooden (_wooden_ being metal made to look like wood) stand with an ultra-wide ViewScreen mounted to the wall above it.

PhotoPanels were propped up on makeshift stands made from _actual_ wood and were sitting on a coffee table in between the ViewScreen and the couch. Various photos of what Jacob would have assumed to be Maya's family. He didn't have time to really get a look at them before Maya switched them all off using the ViewScreen mounted next to the door. She needed to be _very_ private about her life. Although he had _just_ met her so he didn't have any right to blame her.

The opposite side of the room was a small kitchen which looked completely unused. There was no stain or mark in sight. But it was well decorated with potted plants and flowers that sat in front of a large window that displayed the purple-colored space that surrounded the station. Jacob knew—based on the size of the station—that Maya's room wasn't anywhere _near_ the edge of the station. He also knew that much like the holographic that hid the cargo hangar's entrance from him, these windows were just as fake. But they looked just like the real thing so Jacob couldn't complain. He liked the view.

There was also another "wooden" desk with a chair in front of it. Other than that, the room was mostly empty. It was empty but felt more like a home than other rooms he'd been in. Maybe even his own, when he had one. Then, he lived in his starship. It wasn't comfortable but it worked well enough for him.

"Don't look at it too hard," Maya said as she walked past the living section of the room and pulled open the wooden door. Behind it, Jacob could see what looked like a bedroom. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll be out in a second."

* * *

Maya closed the door and slowly walked over to her bed. She sat down at the foot of the bed and squeezed her hands together. She was getting ready to call her sister. Hopefully, she would pick up even though she was calling at a different time than usual. Back on Earth, Sarah would be at school.

So many things were _flooding_ through Maya's mind at that moment. She needed to tell Sarah about what she was about to do. She wouldn't be back at the station for days. She didn't know. And a starship wasn't able to get a clear transmission all the way to Earth.

Maya rested her elbows on her knees and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. She didn't have much time left. Jacob was waiting for her. Maya sucked a deep breath of air into her lungs and pushed it slowly back out.

"Computer. Open a communication with Sarah Rea."

* * *

Thousands of miles away. Millions, billions, trillions of miles away. Almost on the other side of the galaxy. Tucked away in one of the four arms of what humanity once called the Milky Way—forced by alien races to call it Euclid—a small, almost insignificant planet compared to the vastness of the universe around it, orbited its star. Its surface shining a bright blue with the darkness behind it making it shine even brighter.

Almost just as insignificant as the planet it was found on, there was a small town located on the east side of where the United States once reigned. In that town was a young girl sitting in a cold, hard, plastic chair, in a cold, dimly lit classroom.

In front of her were a class of students learning the same, boring work she was. She didn't think that it would benefit her at all to know how to find the hypotenuse of a triangle or to learn when scientists thought the first Gek appeared in the galaxy. All she could think about was her sister that lived so many miles away.

She ran her hands through her long light brown hair as she traced the lines in the wooden desk below her with her eyes. Her sister hadn't returned her call the night before and that morning. She never had missed a call for the four years that it had been since she had left Earth. It felt so long ago but it had gone by so fast. Even the time she had with her sister when she was on Earth. Time she wished with everything that she had, that she could get back.

She was loosely paying attention to her teacher explaining hyper-physics when a quiet dinging rang in her ears. She reached into her pocket and pulled the small limited AI out of her pocket and tapped the screen. There was a message written on it.

_Incoming Transmission / Amayaris Rea_

She practically jumped out of her seat. She waved her hand trying to get her teacher's attention. When she did, the teacher's face didn't seem too pleased.

"You have a question Ms. Rea?" The teacher asked as she pulled the thinly framed glasses off of her nose.

"Uh- yeah," Sarah said. She was a lot more like her sister than she would care to admit. Her shyness defiantly was something that carried over. Sometimes, she couldn't believe that Maya was able to handle it.

She had just realized that she had managed to not only get her teacher's attention, but the entire class's attention. "My- my sister's calling. I really need to pick up."

The teacher's eyes widened, "Maya again?"

"It won't take long," she shot back trying her best to ignore the onlooking eyes of her classmates. "I promise."

Her teacher rolled her eyes and nodded towards the door, "Make it quick."

Sarah briskly made her way around the tables and chairs to the metal door and pushed it open. She stepped outside and closed the door behind herself.

"Answer transmission," she said straightening her back. She wanted to join her sister in the vacuum of space. Standing up straight and answering transmission through voice commands rather than buttons made her feel like a Starfleet cadet.

_"Voice commands are prohibited,"_ her AI returned to her with its slightly more higher pitched voice, ruining the moment.

Sarah sighed and pushed the pick up button on the physical AI in her pocket. Maya didn't have time to reply before Sarah spoke.

"What the _hell_ Maya!" Sarah almost yelled. Even though she was really happy to finally hear from her sister, she was still angry.

_"Sarah, I'm sorry,"_ Maya's voice filled her ears a few long seconds later. _"Lots of things have happened since we last talked."_

"Which was yesterday morning," Sarah said. "That has _never_ happened."

_"Well, there's a first time for everything Sarah,_" Maya snapped. She sighed, _"I'm sorry. Things have happened that I can't tell you about—things I don't understand. I called to tell you that I won't be at the station to pick up your calls. Probably for a few days."_

"What happened?" Sarah asked, suddenly filled with regret from pushing her sister so hard. She could hear the stress in her sister's voice.

_"I can't- I don't know,"_ Maya replied. _"Please. Just realize what I'm saying now so it doesn't hit you hard later."_

"How many days?"

_"I don't know, Sarah,"_ her sister said again. Sarah could _hear_ the tears in her eyes.

"I need to go, Maya," Sarah said. Her excitement was completely gone. It was simply that she didn't understand what was going on and because she had become so reliant on her sister that she almost didn't know what to do without her. That was why she felt anger turn her face red.

_How could she do this to me? Four years and now nothing?_

_"No Sarah wait-,"_ Maya started but Sarah cut the communication and stepped back into the classroom.

* * *

Maya listened to the static that signified the end of a transmission. Her head in her hands. She hated this. She hated what had just happened. She wanted to go back to Earth _so_ badly. It tore her apart every _single_ time she had to tell her sister that she didn't know when she would come back.

She wanted to step out of her room and explain to Jacob that after everything they had gone through all ready, that she wasn't the one to help him. Then she would fly back to Earth no matter what the outcome was and go to her sister.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and forced herself to stand up. There was a pull. Something was pulling on her. Numbing every other emotion except for one: curiosity. The need to _know_ overwhelmed everything else and there was only one thing that she knew, that could explain the feeling. She had felt it many many times before.

The Atlas was calling to her.


	6. The Wreck

Maya forced herself to stand. Forced herself to wipe the tears from her eyes. She quickly made her way to the bathroom and washed her face, fixed her hair, got herself as ready as she could for facing Jacob again. The _last_ thing she wanted was for _him_ to realize that she had been crying in her room for some reason.

She took in a deep breath and pushed the door open. Jacob had made himself comfortable on her couch. He was looking a bit bored as he slowly scanned the room in front of him again.

"Sorry that took so long," Maya said as she stepped out into the room. She made her way over to her desk and grabbed a few pieces of paper and put them into the draws underneath the desk. "Just some things I needed to clear up."

Jacob nodded, "I understand. What's the plan anyway?"

She turned back towards him and shook her head, "We need to get you a suit first."

"Do you know where we can find any extras?" Jacob asked.

"I think so," Maya said as she made her way to the door, pulling her jacket over her shoulders. She pulled the door open and stepped through. "Hang tight. I'll be back."

Before Jacob could reply, she closed the door and walked down the corridor.

* * *

_Maya,_ thought Jacob. _Was weird._

Jacob had seen a lot since he had left Earth. Even when he was on Earth, there were always those weird ones. The people that for some small reason, were just a little bit odd. Some were odder than others but back when he had an ever-changing group of friends, there was always a weird one.

Maya was unlike any he had seen before. He could tell that she was usually calm and collected. But there were times he could sense her emotions take control of her. She acted frantically and sporadically when things were pulling on her emotions. Jacob was too observant not to notice. Even when she tried to hide it from him.

But then there was the sadness and loneliness he saw in her eyes. The same look that took him off guard. He had _never_ seen that in someone before. That amount of emotion all bundled up in one spot. Maybe that's why he decided to ask _her_ if she would help him. He had never trusted anyone with his past. Even just a little. Maya was the first person he had asked for anything.

Although he didn't really appreciate how she kept leaving him alone.

* * *

It took Maya a long time to carry an entire exosuit through the corridors of the space station without anyone noticing. The employees living on the station were allowed to freely roam the station where they were allowed _to_ roam there were a lot of restrictions. A lot more than Maya decided to memorize. She assumed that carrying an un-checked out bright yellow suit down the corridors was not allowed.

Eventually, she slipped into her room carrying the suit in her arms. The door closed behind her and she set the suit down on the gray, thin carpeted floor. She took her jacket off and tossed it onto the wooden stand that held the ultra-wide ViewScreen above it.

"Sorry again, that that took so long," Maya said as she turned towards Jacob. "But, I got your suit. Now we're pretty much ready."

"Ready for what?" Jacob replied from his position on the couch.

"I don't know," Maya admitted. "Find out what that transmission was about for a start. I'm a little more than curious."

"And you know why," Jacob said rather than ask. He already could see that Maya knew why.

"Would it be a bad thing if I still want to find out either way?" Maya asked, confident that Jacob knew _exactly_ what she meant.

He smiled and shook his head, "No. It isn't. Maybe we should take a second and rest for a bit. You seem a little bit… stressed."

"I just told my sister that I won't be answering her calls for the first time in four years," Maya said. Opening up more than she had to anyone. "She wasn't very happy. That would be the reason why I'm 'a little bit stressed'."

"She didn't take the news that well?" Jacob asked as Maya grabbed the chair in front of her desk, spun it around and sat down in it.

"I guess not," Maya said rubbing her eyes. "I've told you more than I wanted to already."

Jacob sat back in the couch, "I'm not prying. Everything you've said you've told me on your own."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Maya asked.

Jacob shrugged, "Don't know. Just popped into the old brain. Sometimes that happens. We can head out if you want to."

Maya wrinkled her eyebrows and looked at Jacob. It took a few seconds but she slowly shook her head, "No. Let's get some sleep first. We'll head out in the morning."

Jacob frowned and patted the couch he sat on, "Alright. Looks like I'm all ready to go"—he swung his legs on the couch and laid back with his head resting on the armrest—"See you in the morning."

Maya smiled. Even though she had just met Jacob a few days ago, and she still didn't trust him at all, she was beginning to think that he might become her very first friend.

* * *

The night was full of restlessness for Maya. She spent most of the night worrying about her sister than actual sleep. But eventually, the morning finally came for her. In space, the difference between night and day was nonexistent. People were encouraged to sync there clocks to the home planet of the race that owned the station they lived on. No one followed that advice. They all just set there time to their home planet's time. Maya had set her's to the same time it was at her home town on Earth and being the only human in the station, meant no one was awake when she was.

Jacob was though. And as soon as Maya had showered and gotten ready, they left her room. She wished that she could rip the ViewScreen off the wall and carry the mechanics with her but she knew it wasn't possible.

She sent Jacob's AI a route to the cargo hangar and he made his way there. Maya turned the opposite direction and walked down the corridor and the stairs. She made her way to the public hangar and found her ship. Once she got in, she activated the LaunchThrusters—not even carrying to do a system check—and blasted off into space.

Jacob joined her a few minutes later. She had weaved around to the backside of the station to see his ship fly out of a hidden entrance. She followed his ship away from the station and then both of them jumped to the system were Maya had received the mysterious transmission.

The small red hexagon still hovered in front of the planet in the distance. Maya took the lead and Jacob followed behind her as they flew towards the planet.

The PulseEngine disengaged as Maya broke through the planet's atmosphere. Her ship rattled and the glass canopy was filled with orange fire as she did. A small part of Maya almost thought the ship could have fallen apart at any second but it didn't. Eventually, the ship slowed and the fire dissipated leaving the surface of the planet in full view.

Maya could see a pillar of black smoke that was rising towards the sky. She flew her ship towards it. It looked like it was a crashed ship of some kind. It looked like a small yellow Fighter with a short and stubby front. It was sitting in a flat circle of land on top of gentle hills. Maya knew as she initiated her ship's landing procedures that that ship would not be able to fly again. There was no doubt in Maya's mind that whoever had piloted that ship was long dead.

Jacob had to land his Hauler a little farther away since the area surrounding the wreck was too rocky for his ship to land in. Maya's, however, was able to land just a few meters away because of its small size.

She got out of her ship and slowly walked towards the wreck. Her AI must've made a mistake. There was no way whoever had contacted her had flown this ship. Maya predicted that it had crashed three or four days prior.

"Computer, voice command," Maya said as Jacob walked up behind her in his new yellow Exosuit. "Tell me how long ago this ship crashed."

_"Estimated four day period due to structural degradation,"_ her AI replied.

"Four days," Maya repeated. Then she noticed something lying at the base of the hill. It was a round piece of machinery shaped like a sphere.

As she got closer she saw that each side of the sphere had circle panels on the device. One had popped off and thick black rubber tubes were spilling out onto the ground. She assumed that it was some kind of distress beacon. That she would be able to find out what had happened there by interfacing with it.

Maya slowly walked towards the device. She saw a large handle on the top of the device that allowed the panel to be removed. She stood over the device and reached down towards the handle. Jacob was behind her and ready to say something but she had already grabbed the handle.

The device started to glow as Maya stepped back. It got blinding that Maya shielded her eyes from it. Then her body went limp and she snapping into unconsciousness as quickly as a twig getting broken in half. Jacob caught her as she fell back and slowly set her on the ground.

"Maya?" He asked but he couldn't see through her visor. "Maya!"

He managed to pull her arm over his shoulder and grab her waist. He brought her back to his ship. Once they were in and the ship was sealed, he unlatched Maya's helmet and took it off. Her eyes were darting around underneath her closed eyelids and her hands were completely clenched. Jacob pulled his gloves off and held Maya's head in his hands. He used his left thumb to lift up Maya's right eyelid.

Jacob let go of her head and jumped back when he saw nothing but a black orb where he should have seen her bright hazel eyes. Something was going on inside her mind and he didn't know what.

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, "Maya, what's going on in there?"

* * *

She stood in front of the spherical device. It was blindingly bright. She shielded her eyes from the light and realized that she wasn't in her suit anymore. It seemed to have just disappeared. She stood in the skintight clothes she would wear underneath the suit.

She squeezed her eyes closed when the light got brighter and brighter. It burned through her eyelids. Her eyes started to ache from the amount of light pushing through them. It started to hurt. Like she was staring into the light of the sun.

She formed her hands into fists and pushed them into her eyes trying to relieve the pain. She screamed when it became too much to bear but there was nothing. There was no sound. Nothing but an intense vibration that seemed to have come from nowhere. Her knees shook and she fell to the ground but as soon as her knees touched the ground, everything disappeared. The sound, the bright light, the pain. It was all gone.

He lowered her hands from her eyes and opened them. Everything was dark. The ground was black and reflective like water and it was eerily quiet. In front of her was the spherical device. The top panel was on the ground beside her and something was floating inside of the hole it left in the device.

Maya slowly stood up and peered inside. Something shot out of it and she fell back to the ground, pushing herself away with her hands and feet. She looked up at what now hovered above the device. It was another sphere made out of what looked like marble. It was colored a bright red and it was slowly rotating. It cast a red glow on Maya's face as she stood up. The orb pulsated as she got closer. It's smooth marbly surface suddenly becoming rough with large, sharp points pointing away from it.

Then there was a burst of deafening static coming from the orb. Maya jumped back and immediately covered her ears with her hands. The static didn't end. It never stopped but Maya could hear something else among the static. A voice. The sound made chills run down Maya's spine. But the voice was saying something. It was a name.

_Artemis_.


End file.
